Why employee centricity is mission-critical for businesses

The world has seen a flurry of unprecedented headwinds over the last two years, including a global pandemic, geopolitical tensions, supply chain challenges, and inflation. These headwinds are making it costlier than ever before to run a business, meaning the pressure is on for organisations to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and ensure that their business is durable and resilient against the inevitable shocks that may come their way.

As businesses navigate their way around the economic uncertainty, people remain at the heart of every business. A deliberate talent retention and employee engagement strategy will go a long way in delivering sustained business outcomes. As we move further in 2023, organisations will need to learn to pivot towards employee centricity as a mission-critical driver of innovation and transformation.

Organisations will invest in TX strategies to drive greater employee and customer loyalty and advocacy

In the face of growing business uncertainty, many organisations are looking to recession-proof their business by delivering seamless customer experiences that can drive growth, safeguard revenues, and earn customer loyalty. At the same time, there is a growing realisation that the employee experience is just as critical to their success as the customer experience.

This has prompted many to focus on total experience (TX) strategies that combine both customer (CX) and employee experience (EX) initiatives. By reusing existing technology investments that are critical to both CX and EX journeys, a TX strategy can help companies drive additional business value and retain scarce talent. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2024, organisations providing TX will outperform competitors by 25% in CX and EX satisfaction metrics.

These strategies will also lead to superior shared experiences that allow organisations to deliver more agile and resilient business outcomes, which are essential to their success during turbulent periods.

Composability will be a core pillar of business strategy to drive innovation and agility

On average, APAC organisations are using 1,020 individual applications such as marketing, finance, and cloud — higher than the United States and Europe regions. Yet, only 28% of these applications are integrated on average, indicating that there is still an enormous opportunity to improve connected customer and employee experiences.

Poorly connected systems and their resulting process and data silos are a significant barrier to creating integrated user experiences, with a majority of APAC organisations citing these silos as a challenge (94%). Thus, a composable enterprise strategy, which reimagines data sources as reusable capabilities and combines them with hyperautomation technologies, can help organisations overcome capacity constraints in IT delivery. Additionally, it enables them to innovate at speed and scale, and meet the growing demand for seamless, connected experiences that are critical to their success.

By adopting this approach, organisations can respond quickly to changing market demands. This, in turn, enables them to foster customer loyalty and employee advocacy in a cost-effective and strategic manner.

Using low-/no-code tools and automation to cope with growing customer and digital transformation demands 

Amid rising macroeconomic pressure and a growing demand for seamless customer experiences, IT departments are bearing an immense weight to deliver business results. According to a study by MuleSoft, 84% of APAC organisations reported increased IT budgets, but this has also resulted in a higher demand for IT projects that IT teams are struggling to manage.

One way to alleviate the burden on IT departments is to empower a larger cohort of business technologists to use low-/no code tools for their own digital projects. There are over 1 billion knowledge workers compared to just 27 million professional developers globally. This means that there are approximately 50 knowledge workers to every professional developer, making business teams the biggest untapped opportunity in accelerating innovation and closing the transformation delivery gap.

It is highly encouraging that 52% of APAC organisations will have a mature strategy to empower non-technical users to integrate apps and data sources powered by APIs. Such tools help businesses simplify workflows, enable more workers to contribute to the organisation’s digital innovation efforts, and overcome the IT skills and delivery gaps in a managed and secure way. Fusion teams that combine business and technology experts can innovate freely with the right tools, working alongside the IT department to mitigate any cyber or compliance risks.

Employee centricity is key to driving success amidst unprecedented headwinds

Against a backdrop of unprecedented headwinds, an agile and resilient strategy will be key to driving success. Employee centricity is an essential ingredient to enhancing an organisation’s agility and resilience, as it places the spotlight on empowering the very individuals who make up the entire organisation.

When employees are equipped with the right skills, tools, and technologies, organisations can transform the experiences of each employee. It allows them to innovate freely, unlock new possibilities, and directly drive business outcomes. By enabling employees to be the key drivers of success, organisations can enjoy the agility and resilience afforded to them by a more organic, human-centric way of delivering greater business outcomes and increasing employee engagement and retention.